From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
It’s a United Kingdom After All!
Sorry, lassies.
Voters in Scotland decisively rejected independence from the United Kingdom in a referendum that had threatened to break up the 307-year union, but also appeared to open the way for a looser, more federal Britain.
With results tallied from all 32 voting districts, the “no” campaign won 55.3 percent of the vote while the pro-independence side won 44.7 percent. The margin was greater than forecast by virtually all pre-election polls. . . .
The decision spared Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain a shattering defeat that would have raised questions about his ability to continue in office and would have diminished his nation’s standing in the world.
“WHAT?”
One of the first voices I want to hear from when there’s big news in the British Isles is Daniel Hannan, member of the European Parliament and friend of NR:
Thank God. Just thank God. I don’t much care at the moment whether God is Scottish, and is glowering approvingly at Great Britain from over His bands and Geneva gown, or whether He is English and is raising a glass of sherry with an absent-minded smile. At least my country is intact.
When I say, “my country”, I don’t just mean what it says on my passport. I’m one of those UK nationals — a minority, perhaps, but not an insignificant one — who self-identify as British. In England, Scotland and Wales, older patriotisms generally take precedence (Northern Ireland is a special case, obviously). Although many people across Great Britain are convinced, indeed passionate, Unionists, a “Yes” vote wouldn’t have forced them to redefine their identity. The UK might have been divided, and they might have been sorry to see it go, but they’d have carried on being English or Scottish or Welsh.
Those of us who are British first had no such fall-back. A “Yes” vote would have meant the end of the country we belonged to — the end of its name, of its flag, of our internal map of home.
Hannan notes a likely future step is expanded local control for certain government powers — something both capital-C Conservatives and small-c conservatives generally like to see.
A happy ending in the news, for once!
Last night’s tweets as Sean Connery can be found here.